Print |
March 13-15 and 19-21, 2012: Leanne Hinton in Australia launches the program “Master-Apprentice”
The program Master-Apprentice was created in 1992 in the United States by the association “Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival” (AICLS). However, it was only later that it became a success thanks to the linguist Leanne Hinton and her book, published in 2001, How to keep your language alive which explains the program’s workings using concrete examples.
The principle is simple: it consists in creating pairs of partners, pairing a native speaker of an autochthonous or indigenous language (the master) and a young learner (the apprentice). The language learning is accomplished through immersion; for this reason, the pair is encouraged to spend the maximum time possible together, ideally 20 hours per week. The language transmission takes place through daily activities during which the learner can ask his tutor questions.
This program has succeeded in the United States, Canada, and Europe where it aided in the reconstruction of several communities of indigenous language speakers. Currently, the program is making its debut in Australia with the “Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity” (RNLD) which organizes two workshops lasting three days in Australia to train 38 indigenous persons. They hope that this program will help revitalize several Australian languages
The workshops will be led by Leanne Hinton, Nancy Steel, and Stan Rodriguez with the following objectives:
• To build a team of native speaker trainers who can explain the program “Master-Apprentice” in communities, key organizations, and academic indigenous institutions;
• To propose appropriate methods for locations where there is no fluent speaker of an indigenous language or for communities that are not ready to use this program
Dates and locations of conferences:
March 13-15, Alice Springs (Australia)
March 19-21, Kununurra (Australia)
For more information: http://www.rnld.org/MALLP